Musical fame explores the canvas at MFA

In today's celebrity culture that obsesses over Beyonce's attire on the red carpet, it is easy to forget that the music she makes is actually a form of art.

The standard expectation is that so-called "real" art is found only in the vicinity of four white walls but a current exhibition entitled "Contemporary Outlook: Seeing Songs," on display at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, shows how large an influence music can be for an artist. To represent the ubiquitous role music now plays in our lives today, the exhibit seeks to combine the two worlds of both visual art and music.

The exhibition works on some levels better than others. Herb Ritts' iconic portraits of famous artists, such as The Beatles, Janis Joplin and Little Richard, are a brilliant reminder that music has become more and more about the performer. Nevertheless, the exhibition fails to show how exactly musicians have changed to become as infamous and omnipresent as they are today.

One can't help but contrast notorious paparazzi photos of today's musicians-turned-celebrities with the subdued black and white images of a serene and composed Bob Dylan strumming on his guitar.

The music and sound itself becomes the focal point in a series of superimposed sheet music by Jim Hodges. By photographing the sheet music of pieces by Wagner and Shumann and then digitizing the images, certain notes are more accentuated by lighting, shade, and opacity. Without the ability to hear the notes in your ears, it becomes a rare experience to encounter music visually. Tim Bauington's "Midnight Blues" assigns a different color to each of the 12 tones in order to give color to music by the Allman Brothers. The length of the note signifies the width of the color. There becomes no need to have any prior knowledge of the music referred to because the entire exhibition is entirely a sensory experience of the eyes.

That is, except for one video installation piece that serves as the main reason to head to this exhibition. Candace Breitz's "Queen (A Portrait of Madonna)" consists of 30 Italians performing Madonna's The Immaculate Collection. Thirty video screens air the entire 73 minutes on repeat with each performer staring directly at the camera and giving it their all. It becomes completely absorbing to watch the raw energy of their singing and forgivable to forget that the lyrics were actually made famous by Madonna. The music, not the performer, once again becomes the emphasis. Unfortunately, as the exhibition underhandedly reminds us, the same could not easily be done for our celebrity-obsessed society today.